Getting Past the Fear of Speaking Japanese
Speaking and having Japanese people understand you is a very rewarding experience. It can also be a terrifying experience for a variety of reasons.
- What if I say something rude, or stupid.
- What if I don’t say this perfectly.
- I am not ready to speak, I don’t know enough yet
Whatever the reason is eventually most of us want to be able to speak Japanese. After all, it takes a long time to learn so we need some motivation to continue. In order to speak though it is important to understand the mental blocks and fears, we have about speaking Japanese. Everyone is different and so there is no one answer to get over these psychological barriers. But, I hope my experience with learning to speak Japanese can help you too.
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How to Speak Japanese and Psychological Barriers
Before you are able to speak in Japanese there are two types of hurdles you need to get over.
- Learning the Speaking Skills
- Getting past Psychological Barriers
First, learning the skills to speak is basically just learning how to pronounce things, learning vocabulary, and so on. Today though we are talking about psychological barriers. These are fears people have which can prevent them from taking the next step to speaking in Japanese.
https://japaneseuniverse.com/2024/02/18/pac-man-in-japaneseconcepts-behind-development-to-global-icon/Psychological Barriers
Psychological barriers are very real. Speaking isn’t natural for everyone. This could be that some people are anxious about talking with a Japanese person. They don’t want to make mistakes, sound stupid, say something rude accidentally, or whatever.
Fears don’t only need to be related to talking with people. While learning to speak, people may also be embarrassed talking to themselves. Or, more likely they are probably living somewhere with other people and are embarrassed to have other people hear them talking to themselves.
A third barrier is just plain confidence. People may feel ok speaking but they may be too self-conscious and focusing too much on their faults or fear of faults. This leads people to overthink what they are wanting to say before they say it. Which is a huge factor affecting fluency. When you learn Japanese from a book, you learn how to say things grammatically and when to use certain words. That is knowledge though. Speaking is a skill. When you are actually wanting to use that knowledge if you are too hung up on being 100% correct then you are putting up too much resistance. That will prevent the words from freely coming out and affect how fluently you can speak.
Getting Past Psychological Barriers
Everyone is different and I can not say what will help you specifically get past your own barriers. But, I can give some advice that may help.
Speaking to Yourself
The first thing is if you are anxious about being heard by people when you speak then try to go somewhere that people can’t hear you. If you don’t have anywhere to go then whisper to yourself. You can try this too, grab a cup and put it in front of your mouth when you speak. The sound will echo back at you so you can hear yourself better if you are whispering.
If that does not work, then let others know how it is important for you to practice speaking. If they are supportive they may assure you not to worry, or even have some suggestions. Who knows, but sometimes addressing your anxieties directly can help to elevate them.
Speaking to Others
If you are afraid to talk to people, then the only advice I would have is to not talk to people. It is important to get used to speaking and listening in a conversation. But it is not that important in the beginning. Get used to speaking and listening to yourself before you try to have a conversation.
Or, if you are able try hiring a Japanese tutor. These are people that are paid to listen to people not speaking perfect Japanese.
Confidence Issues
Finally, if you have confidence issues about your Japanese then hopefully my own experience will help.
Ignorance is Bliss
When I started learning Japanese I knew nothing about how languages worked. I did not realize that languages had all sorts of differences in grammar, word usages, and so on. On top of that, when I had opportunities to talk to Japanese people I would often get compliments. Even if my Japanese was not perfect or bad. Regardless, this gave me more motivation. I thought my Japanese was better than it actually was. This was actually the key that helped me to learn how to speak Japanese.
Bad Habits can be Broken
Over time though, my confidence allowed me to speak. I did not worry so much about my Japanese. That was until I learned enough Japanese to realize that I did not know as much as I thought I did. At that point, I was in Japan and I had people correcting me or telling me they did not understand me. Luckily at that time, I had enough practice speaking that I was happier with my ability to speak than to care too much about my errors. In fact, when it came to grammatical errors or word usage most of that was able to be fixed pretty easily once I had the basic skills of speaking. It is possible to get into a bad speaking habit and to continually say something wrong. But, it is not impossible to correct these habits.
The Sixth Sense of Language Learning
There is a kind of sixth sense to language learning. When you actually start speaking you will notice that you say something one way but it feels incorrect. You may not know why but with more speaking you will start to notice you know things about Japanese you never realized. You will say things in certain ways that you don’t remember learning to say. This process along with continued active learning will help you to correct your mistakes.
Don’t be Over Confident
As long as you have an open mind to want to learn, and you accept that you will and probably are making mistakes you are unsure of, then you will improve. It was not until later on when I became fluent in Japanese where the problems started. At that point, I became too confident in my speaking abilities and that made things harder to correct. That was until I realized once more that I had to accept my insufficiencies if I wanted to improve. Which allowed me to get even better at speaking. So, keep the exploratory mindset of a beginner even when you become advanced. That will keep your mind open to learning more.
The Beginner Mindset
Never give up the mindset of a beginner. If you lose that then not only will learning Japanese become less exciting but you will stop learning.
In the beginning, you don’t expect to be perfect. That attitude alone will help you to actually improve since you can see where you make errors.
When you reach the advanced level it is easy to decide that you know everything and stop learning. Then anytime you do find something you did not know about Japanese it will be a frustrating or irritating experience. You may beat yourself up about not knowing. Or worse, you may try to convince yourself that you actually did know. This is the beginning to the end of learning Japanese and to your level of fossilizing and never improving.
The only way to get past that is to think like a beginner again. If you think like a beginner you will be more excited about learning things you did not know. The more excited you are about learning more about Japanse, then the more you will learn. you will be more open to noticing things that will help you to learn better. If you think you don’t have anything more to learn, then you won’t learn anymore.
